NASA is contacting Voyager 2 – 11.6 billion miles from Earth...

The only radio antenna that can control the 43-year-old spaceship has been offline since March because it receives new hardware. However, work is on track in February.

On October 29, 2020, the mission operators sent a series of orders NASAThe Voyager 2 spacecraft for the first time since mid-March. The spaceship flew alone while the 70 meter wide radio antenna it was talking to was offline for repairs and upgrades. Voyager 2 returned a signal confirming the “call” was received and carried out the commands with no problem.

The call to Voyager 2 was a test of the new hardware recently installed on Deep Space Station 43, the only dish in the world that can send commands to Voyager 2. It is located in Canberra, Australia and is part of NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN). , a collection of radio antennas around the world mainly used to communicate with spacecraft operating beyond the moon. Since the court went offline, mission operators have been able to get health updates and scientific data from Voyager 2, but they have not been able to send commands to launch the far-off probe, which has been billions of miles from Earth since 1977.

Among the upgrades to DSS43, as the court is called, are two new radio transmitters. One of them spoken to by Voyager 2 hasn’t been replaced in over 47 years. The engineers also upgraded heating and cooling equipment, power supplies, and other electronics required to operate the new transmitters.

The successful call to Voyager 2 is just an indication that the court will be back online in February 2021.

“What makes this job unique is that we work at every level of the antenna, from the base near the floor to the feedcones in the center of the dish that extend over the edge,” said Brad Arnold. the DSN project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Southern California. “This test communication with Voyager 2 definitely shows us that things are on the right track with our work.”

Worldwide network

The Deep Space Network consists of radio antenna systems that are located in Canberra around the globe. Goldstone, California; and Madrid, Spain. The positioning of the three facilities ensures that almost any spaceship with a line of sight to Earth can communicate with at least one of the facilities at any time.

Voyager 2 is the rare exception. To do a close flyby NeptuneAt the moon Triton in 1989, the probe flew over the north pole of the planet. This trajectory deflected it south relative to the plane of the planets and has been moving in that direction ever since. The spaceship is now more than 18.8 billion kilometers from Earth and so far south that it has no line of sight with radio antennas in the northern hemisphere.

Click on this interactive visualization of NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft and give it a try. The spacecraft, launched in 1977, is now more than 18.8 billion kilometers from Earth. Follow its dramatic story with Eyes on the Solar System. Photo credit: NASA /JPL-Caltech

DSS43 is the only dish in the southern hemisphere that has a transmitter that is powerful enough and broadcasts the correct frequency to send commands to the distant spaceship. Voyager 2’s faster moving twin, Voyager 1, went by a different route Saturn and can communicate via antennas in the two DSN facilities in the northern hemisphere. The antennas must send uplink commands to both Voyagers in a radio frequency range called S-band and the antennas downlink data from the spacecraft in an area called X-band.

While mission operators have been unable to control Voyager 2 since DSS43 went offline, the three 34-meter wide radio antennas in Canberra can be used together to capture the signals that Voyager 2 is broadcasting to Earth. The probe sends back scientific data from interstellar space or the region outside the heliosphere of our sun – the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields that is created by the sun and surrounds the planets and the Kuiper belt (the accumulation of small, icy bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune) .

DSS43 entered service in 1972 (five years before Voyager 2 and Voyager 1 launched) and was only 64 meters wide at the time. It was expanded to 70 meters in 1987 and has received a number of upgrades and repairs since then. However, the engineers overseeing the current work say this is one of the most significant overhauls the court has received, and the longest it has been offline in over 30 years.

“The DSS43 antenna is a highly specialized system. There are only two other similar antennas in the world, so keeping the antenna out of service for a year is not an ideal situation for Voyager or many other NASA missions, ”said Philip Baldwin, SCaN program manager (Space Communications and Navigation) from NASA. “The agency decided to do these upgrades to ensure that the antenna can still be used for current and future missions. For an antenna that is nearly 50 years old, it is better to be proactive than to react with critical maintenance. ”

The repairs will benefit other missions, including the Mars Perseverance Rover, which will land on the Red Planet on February 18, 2021. The network will also play an important role in the moon-to-Mars exploration efforts, providing communications and navigation support for both the forerunner Moon and Mars missions and the crewed Artemis missions.

The Deep Space Network is managed by JPL for the SCaN program, which is located at NASA headquarters in the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. The Canberra station is managed on behalf of NASA by the Australian National Science Agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.

The Voyager spacecraft was built by JPL, which both continue to operate. JPL is a division of Caltech in Pasadena. The Voyager missions are part of the NASA Heliophysics System Observatory, which is sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate in Washington.